


Brandy

by littlelionlady



Series: Napoleon Solo's Inexhaustible and Exceptionally Broad Supply of Liquor [1]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Angst, Drinking, Drunk Gaby, Drunk Illya, Drunk Napoleon, Drunk Spies, Fluff, Humour, Hurt/Comfort, I Will Go Down With This Ship, M/M, Spies, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 06:27:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18277667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlelionlady/pseuds/littlelionlady
Summary: Napoleon is perplexed by the fact Illya doesn't like to drink and is determined to find a type of alcohol the Russian would be content to indulge in post-mission, with his new team. Of course, this does present a small challenge; Illya's tastes are specific, he's prone to resisting indulgence and calling it a capitalist affair, and it might just mean they're on more missions hung over than not.  On this particular occasion, Gaby and Napoleon want to know why Illya has such an aversion to drinking, and Illya is certain that drinking, this time, might be a necessary evil. You know, for a spy.





	Brandy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Darkest_Sun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkest_Sun/gifts).



> I have been playing with this idea for quite some time, and as such, took some liberties in getting it out there. If there is any information I am lacking, or that is wrong, just take it with a grain of salt and know I am going to enjoy this project immensely. 
> 
> A quick shoutout to dear Darkest_Sun for letting me bounce ideas around. Every single fanfic idea I've ever had somehow ends up in their inbox, and they listen and contribute with an enthusiasm that sets my soul on fire. 
> 
> Lastly, the content warnings on this story are likely to change over time, what with the inexplicable amount of alcohol and a current lack of wild drunken sex, but for now, enjoy it. 
> 
> And as always, I live for reviews, so HMU.

“What do you mean you don’t like to drink?!” Napoleon Solo exclaimed, drunk.

It had been a particularly rough mission and all three of them had done things they would rather not talk about. Instead, they sat around their latest hotel room - Waverley had sort to make them comfortable after the events of the day - and drank deeply and freely from tall glasses. 

Well, Gaby and Napoleon did. Illya would sip and wince. Gaby was matching Napoleon drink for drink. He would never admit how impressed he was, or how bizarre it was that Gaby was the drinker, and the stoic, Russian Peril was not.  
  
“Sometimes it is a necessary evil,” Illya replied, voicing an opinion that no one had wished to consider. Gaby nodded sloppily and sank further into her chair.

“The only evil,” she mumbled, “is the hangover in the morning.”

Napoleon waved a hand dismissively, “Yes I agree,” he said, “but what do you mean you don’t like it?”

Illya shrugged noncommittally, “Just never found alcohol I enjoyed.” 

Napoleon snorted, actually snorted, and composed himself into a more dignified, if not drunk, version of himself, “Not even vodka?”

Illya visibly greyed, “No, not even vodka. You will never get me to drink that.”

Gaby raised a sleepy eyebrow, “I hear a story in there.”

He swallowed visibly and turned his eyes beseechingly to his counterpart. Napoleon shrugged, “I’m with her.” 

Gaby, eyes closed, cocked a smile in Illya’s direction and hauled herself into standing position, swaying slightly. She opened her eyes and blinked a few times waiting for the room to focus.

“Well, I like vodka, and on another night… like this,” she swallowed back a choke, “I would like to request vodka. So Illya, I would like to know what your aversion to it is.” She stumbled to the sideboard and poured out another fifth of Brandy. Napoleon had brought three bottles of it back to the room, claiming it would warm them against the cold Austrian Winter. One for each of them. Gaby and Illya knew that he really meant it would warm them against the chill of shock and memories of bodies and blood. But he was kind enough not to mention it.

Napoleon held his glass out expectantly. Gaby ignored it and collapsed back into her seat, swinging her body around so her head lounged on the armrest, and her feet hung over the other. He scowled at her and stood awkwardly to refill his own class, pulling his jacket and vest off as he went.

Illya ignored the shape of his shoulders as he struggled. 

The Russian did not drink for many reasons. Firstly because it tasted like petrol and bile, secondly, because it reminded him of his first mission - the one he would spend forever and a bottle trying to forget, thirdly, the hangover was almost never worth it, and lastly, he was a lightweight (though he would never admit it) and had a tendency to act on his… impulses.  
  
Those impulses being to fuck men, of course.

“Illya,” Gaby slurred, waving a hand as if to beckon him, “We’re waiting.”

He sighed and sipped his drink, grimacing slightly as it burned the back of his throat, “I do not see why it is important.” 

Napoleon grinned, “Think of it as a bonding exercise.”  
  
He bristled at that, “I do not see how telling you embarrassing stories of my life is a bonding exercise!”

Napoleon, if possible, grinned harder, “Oh Peril,” he began, “You’ve both heard and read my sad story with the CIA, and you practically helped Gaby live out a shitty tale for her book of adventures,” Gaby shot him a rude hand gesture, “And all we know of your life is just fucking depressing. I think one good drunken story from your adolescence will, well, lighten you up a little.” 

Illya went to interrupt,  but Napoleon held up a hand to dismiss him, “All I know about you is what I have seen and read in your file. The majority of that was redacted by the way,” he threw a lazy hand in the air and leaned back, a rather manically suggestive gleam in his eye, “I did consider breaking into the Kremlin to learn more.”  
  
Illya’s cock twitched. His chest burned.  
  
“Did you just admit to breaking into the Kremlin?”  
  
Napoleon gave a small laugh, “Considering breaking into the Kremlin.”  
  
Gaby sighed impatiently, “Illya, why don’t you like vodka? If you don’t answer the question, I will be forced to feed it to you.”

He groaned at the concept, “It is not a good story,” he warned, “You want it to be funny story where I made fool of myself, but it was not like that.” 

Napoleon nodded solemnly, but Gaby sat forward, gesturing expectantly.

Under any other circumstance, Illya would have stood without saying a word and walked out of the room. But these were not regular circumstances, evident by the glass of amber liquid he currently held in his hand. 

He took a fortifying swig and bit back the grimace that followed.

“My first mission, I was young. Young and naive. I was still angry, but I was determined. My best friend, a boy I grew up with and trained with, he was a part of the same program as me, was assigned to be my partner,” 

Napoleon sat back in his chair and brought his fingertips together. Eyes dark, and guarded. Illya forced himself to look away by glancing at Gaby. Her lips were pursed but she remained open, curious. Napoleon wanted to stop him, to tell him it was okay and that the Russian did not need to explain himself. But he kept his mouth shut and sat stock still, not trusting himself to speak. Illya so rarely opened up, and Napoleon's curiosity burned only slightly brighter than his discomfort.  
  
“We were young and naive and angry and arrogant. We thought nothing could destroy us. We were invincible. We were posing as two brothers in Austria - the first time either of us had been overseas. We were conspicuous and loud. It was just reconnaissance. It was only meant to be-”

Illya voice broke. Lost in the memory, even though he’d barely shared. Napoleon closed his eyes against the pain, he could relate. He was not good at other people’s pain, but he could relate. He wanted to take Illya’s hand and fought against that urge to. Squished down his own feelings to take Illya’s on board. Gaby sat forward and poured more brandy into their glasses. Illya’s smile was cracked and fragile. He knocked the drink back quickly, forgetting to flinch.

“Mikhail and I were very close,” he tried to pour his meaning into these words, willed them to understand who Mikhail was to him, so he wouldn’t be forced to relive it, not again, “That night, we were in a small bar in Vienna, in a booth in the back. We were drunk. Mikhail was, he was trying to get my attention. By the time I understood, we had been compromised. We had been following a lower member of the Maranzzano family at the time.”

Illya remembered the chill in the air, his blood pumping through his ears as they ran quietly through the streets, Mikhail’s hand tightly in his. Lungs burning at the effort. Illya was afraid; drunk and afraid. Illya had seen the exact moment Luca Maranzzano noticed him. Noticed how out of place he was. Of all the people in the bar, they were the three that stood out. Two Russians and an Italian.

Napoleon closed his eyes against Illya’s admission. _Close._ And the way he had said it, Napoleon squished down the sharp pang in his chest, tried to ignore it. That pang had been more frequent recently. The drop in his stomach, the hollowness of his legs. The empty, painful pang that sucked his breath from his lungs. He gasped against it and focused all the energy in his body on listening to Illya.

“Our reconnaissance mission put us in the middle of a feud between the Russians and the Italians. We had not received all the information we needed. Maranzzano had been tasked with tracking two young men, rumoured to be seeking information of a prominent Russian crime family. We were set up by the KGB. Mikhail was shot on site.”

He was no longer with them, remembering the darkness, the salty tang of blood as it pooled around them. The smell of vodka on them both. Illya had been shot in the chest. Mikhail, in the head. The Italian was young, a gun for hire, trying to prove his worth. But the blood made him squeamish. The shots had shocked him, choked him. He had run away, left Illya bleeding out on the ground, gasping, wishing he could feel his arms enough to reach for Mikhail.

It was in that moment, drunk, bleeding and shaking, Illya realised he should have done something, that his training had failed him. That he had failed, his first mission. He had let his partner die. And then he would die. 

He took a deep shuddering breath.  
  
“What happened after?” Gaby inquired, in a whisper.

Illya shrugged, “I was told it was a test. I lived, Mikhail died.”

He was shaking, hands clenched into fists on his thighs, grief still rolling off his frame in waves. All these years spent moving just to escape the memory, never in one place for too long, never making a meaningful connection. And here he was, drunk in Vienna, again, with two of the least likely people he ever thought he would care about. 

Napoleon’s body cracked forward like it had been stuck on a spring, “What do you mean a test?” He didn’t mention how odd it was that a member of the Italian Mob had ventured outside of Italy. Or that he had been searching for Russians in Austria of all places.  
  
Illya groaned and closed his eyes; this was the part that hurt.  
  
“I mean,” he grit out, forcing his body to stay calm, “The two Russians Maranzzano was tasked to kill were Mikhail and myself. He had been fed false information, by the KGB. It was cat and mouse.”  
  
Napoleon sucked in a sharp breath. Gaby was silent.  
  
“Except Cowboy,” Illya opened his eyes, bloodshot and shiny in ways that made Napoleon deeply uncomfortable and itch to comfort him, “We thought we were cat, not mouse.”

“What was the point?” Napoleon spat out. 

Ilya shrugged again, he was doing that a lot tonight. Gaby handed him the bottle, forgoing a glass. Illya drank from it deeply.  
  
“To teach a lesson. That we are not invincible. That we are not too good at being spies, to die. That we cannot be so caught up as to not notice, to not see. Vigilance.”  
  
They sat in silence.

Illya felt as though he had been hollowed out. He had never told this story, not to anyone, and not in this way. Not to his mother, or his father, and his superiors had a completely different story, devoid of all feeling; just fact. Yet, here he was, spilling his secrets across the floor; opening his chest cavity and letting them crawl inside and take a look around.  
  
“You loved him,” Gaby mumbled. There was no shock, no disgust. Just understanding. She knew and did not think of him as anything other than Illya. As her partner.  
  
He nodded avoiding Napoleon’s gaze, which he could feel burning into the side of his face. It felt like a blaze; like he could bask in it and enjoy the warmth spreading through his limbs.  
  
Maybe it was just the alcohol.

“We had been drinking that night. Vodka,” he sighed, “And when I got home, I tried to drown myself in it every night.”  
  
Illya finally sort Napoleon’s gaze, seeking comfort, solace. His eyes were trained to Illya’s with a bold and uncovered intensity that made him want to shrink down and scream and run all at the same time. He wanted to flee and he wanted to fight, break things.    
  
“I didn’t stop. In the end, I thought the accumulative hangover might kill me.”  
  
“So, you had a problem?” Gaby asked, eyeing the bottle in his hand suspiciously.

He shook his head, “Not like Cowboy has a problem,” Illya made a weak attempt at a joke but no one smiled, “I did stop. When everything I saw reminded me of him. And I was right, the hangover was not worth it. I did not think it possible to sweat vodka.”

“Okay,” Napoleon said, at last, eyes never leaving Illya’s, “No vodka.”  
  
Gaby nodded, though Illya did note she looked mildly upset about it. He made a note to buy her some, and stay well away from it.  
  
“No vodka,” Napoleon repeated, “But we will find _something_ you like to drink,” his air of flippancy was back, to crack the tension in the room. For that, Illya was grateful.  
  
“After all, what Russian doesn’t drink?!”


End file.
